Fear and Loathing on the Way to Montpelier - 2

After my first, failed attempt, I was invited again to interview at the company in Vermont.  This time I had an easier time of it. The US Airways flight to Philadelphia was jammed, but on time, and I had time to connect to my commuter flight to Burlington.

What I didn’t understand was Terminal F.

The main terminals at PHL are A through D.  F is the commuter terminal, and you get there via a shuttle bus.  I had a boarding pass that identified my gate, so when I got to the terminal I went straight there, all the way to the end of the terminal.  They were making continual announcements, and it was very crowded and confusing.  I realized as I got closer to departure time that my flight must have changed gates, but there were no displays anywhere I could check.  I asked a US Airways person behind the counter where the Burlington flight was, and it was at the opposite end of the terminal.

I had to hustle but I made it.  At the boarding gate there were three or four gates close together, with flights being called simultaneously, and basically enough seats for about a fifth of the people waiting. 

Frequent flyers often use another word that begins with F to describe your experience in terminal F at PHL.  I just sort of think of the First Circle – more Solzhenitsyn’s than Dante’s.

The airplane was quite small, a CRJ.  It was Air Wisconsin operating as US Airways Express.  My small carry-on fit under the seat.  The overhead would not accommodate anything bigger than, say, the New York Times, and I mean daily, not Sunday. The plane flew up the Jersey shore and then crossed Long Island somewhere around the Queens/Nassau border.  The flight up to Burlington was quick. It was growing dark as we got near Burlington, and there was a hell of a lot of snow on the ground.

Once the plane landed in Burlington, I walked to the baggage claim area where I was met by a driver from the insurance company. He was also picking up another individual who was on the same plane that I was on. When we got to the car the other individual jumped into the front of the car, and I had sit in the back, which I thought was kind of a little bit rude in that I've never been there before and needed to learn how to find my way. The drive from Burlington over to Montpelier takes around 30 minutes and I had never seen snow piled so high in my life.  The weather was actually pretty good, the temperature was not terribly cold, and we got over to the company in good order. The driver dropped off the other guy who was whose car had been left in the company parking lot, and took me over to the guesthouse where, it turns out, they don't have anything to eat for dinner, so he volunteered to take me into town so I could get some takeout at a restaurant.

The restaurant was called Sarducci’s, and it was very busy, and they did have some take out and I got some pasta with chicken which was served in a cardboard container. This is a thing in Vermont: they don't like Styrofoam and use cardboard were other places would use Styrofoam. I went back to the guesthouse with the driver and the band they had some  utensils in the kitchen and I was able to eat my dinner. The guesthouse is extremely spartan; the rooms have a queen size bed and no television.  I spent a very fitful night, mostly because the room heater kept coming on, even though it wasn’t particularly cold in the room, and I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.

The next day I interviewed all day at the insurance company. This is what it looked like right outside the guest house.  They told me half the snow had melted since the big storm that stopped me the first time I tried to get there.

Some of the people I interviewed with I knew from prior work experience, but had never met face to face.  It’s always fun, in that they never look like how you’d imagined. It happened to be March 17, and I had a free lunch in the company cafeteria. I ordered corned beef, it was beyond any doubt the worst corned beef I've ever had. Probably the worst corned beef anyone has ever had. Mind you the cafeteria was actually quite good, and all the time I went there I never had another bad meal. The people were friendly and accommodating and I ended up working out the deal to where I would do some consulting work for them.

The HR lady was particularly impressed that I had my L.L. Bean mug for coffee.  They charge extra for cardboard, but you get a price break if you provide your own mug.

After interviewing with six or seven people, another driver took me back to the airport. What I failed to do was to observe carefully how to get to the airport because it's really tricky. There are not really big on signs in Vermont, and at the airport there's just one tiny little sign under a tree that you really would never see unless you already knew it was there, and so you can drive around for hours trying to find the airport. You wouldn't think it would be hard to find an airport.

I caught a 5 o'clock or so flight from Burlington down to Washington Reagan and all that worked out fine. I was feeling pretty good because things had gone so well.  I found a seat at a restaurant and had something to eat.  I then connected to the US Airways flight (actually Republic Airways operating as USAir Express) and got back to DFW airport in reasonably good shape.

What I did not know is that this was the first, last, and only time that my travel would be routine.

Fear and Loathing on the way to Montpelier (1)

In early 2011, I had a phone call from someone I used to work with regarding a contract position as a business analyst for a company in Montpelier, Vermont.  She worked for their IT outsourcer, and I had worked for their Dallas based subsidiary. I had taken the job in Dallas after my much larger corporate client had severe financial problems, and I felt like I had to take it.  After a year, I could not handle working there any more, and left.  I hadn’t had any nibbles until this phone call.

I thought it would be sort of fun to go back to that company as a consultant, especially at the parent’s headquarters.  So I expressed interest.

Another person called me, from the business area of the company where I would be working. We hit it off well, and she indicated I would need to come up there for a face-to-face interview with several people.  Okay, fine.  She set it up for a day in early March.  They were okay with my obscenely high billing rate.

To get there from where I live (near Dallas) is challenging.  Montpelier, while the state capital, does not have a commercial airport.  The closest airport is in Burlington, a small city overlooking Lake Champlain. Burlington is about 30 miles from Montpelier. There is a surprising amount of air service to Burlington, considering how small a city it is, but the region has a lot of activity, lots of colleges and such, and I learned later that people come down from Quebec to take advantage of cheaper airfares (and pretend not to understand English when it comes to boarding zones).

But basically, to get to Burlington, I would have to connect in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York (LaGuardia), or Washington D.C. The airlines serving Burlington included Delta, United, Jet Blue, Continental (still around then), and US Airways. It seemed as though US Airways had more options available than the other carriers, and although everyone on the various travel podcasts I listen to universally despised US Airways, I decided it would have to do.  I don’t know that it would have made any difference in the long run, because the time I was going back and forth to Vermont included a very stormy spring both in the Northeast and here.

I looked into other ways to get to Montpelier where I wouldn’t have to connect.  There were three: Hartford (Bradley International), Boston, and Montreal. The closest was Montreal, but the service there didn’t provide reasonable choices.  Also, I didn’t know what the border situation was like; would you be stuck for hours in a line waiting for US Immigration and Customs to let you in. And it would confuse the crap out of the Canadian immigration authorities when I, obviously a businessman, said I had no business in Canada and was leaving immediately. 

Hartford was the longest distance, but only by a few miles over Boston. I did not consider Boston an option; I went to college there and have driven in Boston enough times to know that it could take three hours just to get out of Boston if conditions were unfavorable, and even if they weren’t you could still die trying to get out of there.  Hartford looked like a three-hour drive.  But for now I accepted the necessity to (gasp) connect, a frequent flyer’s recipe for disaster.

My first trip was for the all-day interview.  I had emailed an old family friend who lives in Vermont about all this, and he was all excited and offered to pick me up and have me stay at his house.  Later I found out he lived a good distance away and it would have been painful, but the company was putting me up in their guesthouse.  I was supposed to leave at 11 A.M., and if all went according to plan, arrive in Burlington around 5, and a driver would meet me there.  I would stay in the company guesthouse, interview most of the day, and catch an early evening flight to Washington Reagan and then to DFW.

The day I was leaving, I got an email from my friend who lives in Vermont. Basically he said there had been a huge storm and there was snow everywhere, with drifts up to seven feet. Another friend from the company posted a note on Facebook that the Burlington airport was shut down.  So I was dubious about this, but I had agreed to go, so I felt like I should at least make the attempt.

I left the house as planned and headed to DFW Airport.  On my way the phone rang in my car, giving me a chance to use the hands-free, which I barely knew how to use.  It was my contact in the business area, asking where I was.  I replied I was driving to the airport, but wondered if I should turn around.  She said, oh, no, they are really good at cleaning off the roads around here and there should be no problem.

So, I continued on to DFW, to the unfamiliar confines of Terminal E.  I got a sandwich and put it in my bag, and waited.  The plane was an unfamiliar type, an Embraer regional jet, ER-190.  I was not impressed by the condition of the plane – it looked fairly beat up.  The seats were two by two, so no middle seat. My seat was toward the rear – with no status on US Airways I was in a bad boarding zone. My bag was a carry-on that fit underneath the seat, so I was good to go.  It was my first experience with this airline in a while, and they seemed efficient, but a little bit low-rent. It was like a low-cost airline, but without the low costs.

A few hours later, we landed in Philly.  I turned on my iPhone, and it went berserk with text messages and emails from US Airways.  My outbound flight had been cancelled.  I phoned the lady in Vermont and told her.  She said the storm had been really bad and the roads had NOT been cleared as she expected.  When I checked with US Airways stranded passenger desk, the guy, who looked like he must have been an Allegheny veteran, told me everything to Burlington was cancelled for the next two days. I asked if he could get me home.  He checked, and wrote out a paper ticket, with the machine that you slide, that makes an impression on the ticket. Hadn’t seen one of those in 20 years.  Here’s to US Airways. (I had a heck of a time getting that flight added to my Dividend Miles account, because their computer didn't know I was there.)

I called my contact in Vermont and told her I was going back to Dallas.  She couldn’t really say anything – I couldn’t hang around Philly for two days.

I got back home at 10 or so, having not set foot in Vermont. I did get to have my first ride on a ScareBus, an A319 from Philadelphia to DFW. I also failed to choose the best place to eat in PHL, Vino Volo, but I didn’t repeat that mistake a second time.